What’s Goin’ On

This address has been a shade less active than usual the last few days, in part because we’ve been trying to keep a firm hand on the rudder at home since Margaret came home from her travels with an enlarged thyroid—a really enlarged thyroid. When we took her in for tests last week, the lab called up her doctor in the middle of the night, and the doctor called in a prescription immediately and arranged for us to see a top local endocrinologist.

Anyway, it turns out that Margaret does indeed have Grave’s disease. That’s not a huge problem, though the scale of the problem seems to have been unusual. The catch for us is that it’s her second autoimmune problem; she also has celiac sprue, a disease of the digestive system. Our endocrinologist suggested that having two autoimmune diseases did raise the odds—and the stakes—relative to other possible breakdowns.

Again, thyroid problems are very common, affecting about one in ten people (the vast preponderance of them women). We can manage this. It’s the looking over our shoulders at whatever else might be happening that gets spooky.